In a Driverless World, Who Loses and Who Wins?

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Documentary, Society & Culture

4.5 • 32.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

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Summary

In blue cities across the country, unions and politicians want to ban self-driving cars. In this episode from the Search Engine podcast, PJ Vogt visits Boston to sort the facts from the propaganda. (Part two of a two-part series.)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner.
0:05.6	Last week, you heard part one of a two-part series on the rise of driverless cars.
0:10.2	It was made by our friends at the Search Engine podcast, which is hosted by PJ Vote.
0:15.3	If you've never listened to Search Engine before, I would suggest you also check out their episodes on peptides and Anthropic.
0:22.3	You can find them on any podcast app.
0:25.1	And now here is part two of the search engine series on driverless cars.
0:29.0	As always, oh, oh. Our first story was about a driver, a robot driver who evolved over many years
1:03.0	at the nudging and training and machinations of a team of tech people in California.
1:09.4	The second story I want to tell you also starts with the driver.
1:13.2	A driver who is also going to evolve and change due to the machinations of some different
1:17.5	West Coast tech companies, the difference is that this driver is a human being.
1:23.2	Chapter 1.
1:24.5	Abdi Aziz.
1:27.8	I met Abdi Aziz in Boston, where he's been a driver for many decades.
1:32.2	He was doing it all the way back in the 90s.
1:34.5	Back then, he considered taxi driver to be a decent job.
1:38.0	A career.
1:39.2	Professional way, I've been driving for 30 years now.
1:41.9	30 years?
1:42.6	Yes.
1:43.5	I had a limo service for 10 years.
1:46.2	And then I was doing five years for a cab, a taxi.
	...

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